I am so proud of these cookies. They are absolutely divine. I started with a sugar cookie recipe that came with the witch finger mold I got for Halloween. Initially, I just changed the flour to almond flour. Guess what? It was way too buttery and you can’t see knuckle marks in almond flour fingers. So, I retooled. Cut down the butter, came up with a mixture of salted and unsalted, added raspberry jam thumbprints. Ditched the finger idea. Incredible!
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 sticks of butter, softened at room temperature (I used 1 stick of unsalted and 1/2 stick of salted. If you use only unsalted, add a pinch of salt to the recipe)
- 1 1/2 cup Splenda (or sugar)
- 1 large egg
- 2 3/4 cup almond flour (grind it yourself in the food processor, or buy a bag)
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp. almond extract
- Sugar-free raspberry jam
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Assemble your ingredients. Grind your blanched almonds into a fine meal in your food processor, unless you have simply purchased the flour. You want to make sure you have everything, ya know. Make sure you allow the butter to soften to room temperature. Do not cheat and microwave it. Cream the butter and Splenda/sugar together. Add the egg and mix very well. Then add the almond flour and the two extracts. Stir, if you need the exercise, of pull out your hand mixer if you’d rather wash it than beat by hand.
If you have a small cookie scoop, it will really make it easy to whip these babies out. Put teaspoon-sized blobs on a cookie sheet either covered with a silicone mat or parchment paper. Bake for 8 minutes at 350. Then pull them out and put about 1/4 tsp of raspberry jam on each one. Don’t spread it yet. Pop them back into the oven.
I made my second batch on parchment paper. On my first batch (on the silicone mat), I turned on the convection oven for 3 or 4 minutes when I put them back in after adding the jam. On the plate above, the cookie on the left shows how the jam looks after baking. The cookie on the right shows the cookie after I spread the soft, just-cooked jam after the cookie was done.
When you take the cookies out after the first 7 or 8 minutes, flatten them slightly with a small spatula. If you don’t have a convection oven, you’re going to want to add the jam, then put them back in for another 7 minutes or so. You’ll note from my little dollops up above a ways that I did not attempt to make perfect little balls. By gosh, if the suckers are going to be homemade, I don’t want them looking like they were manufactured by the you-know-who elves. Finished product? Awesome, awesome, awesome!
Leave a Reply